Vietnamese Coffee Recap

Hi, guys. My name is Donnie Rouse, and you are listening to the podcast One Life. Today I'm going to talk about coffee. So I recently just came back from a trip to Vietnam. And of all the places that I visited in all my Travels, which includes 49 different places right now, Vietnam was one of my favorite for coffee. And I'll tell you why. The Vietnamese have this very, very big coffee culture. In Hanoi alone, seemed like every single block was cafe after cafe after cafe. And the quality of the coffee that you get in Vietnam is it's just this rich, magical, like, elixir that when you're drinking it, it just makes you stop and notice the flowers and the sounds of horns coming by and the lack of traffic lights and scooter zigzag it every which way. It really kind of sets you in that present moment. So what I wanted to do on this podcast here is I wanted to talk about the brewing method most commonly used in Vietnam. And I know I'm going to butcher the name of it because I'm not sure how to pronounce it, but I'll do my best. And then also the three most popular preparations that they use for Vietnamese coffee, and those preparations are the egg coffee, which you've probably heard of before, coconut coffee and coffee with condensed milk. If I'm not butchering this again, Cafe Suda. Let's start with the. Let's start with the brewer. So the brewer itself is this little thing, I think it's called a fin or pin. P I n is the name of this Vietnamese, otherwise called the Vietnamese brewer. What this device is, it's a little plate that sits on top of the cup, which is a small. The part that's exposed to the cup that drips in. There's this kind of small kind of metal, not a filter kind of separator, which like, allows the. The ground to stay on the top without going into the cup. And I'll give you the actual process for brewing this. So this, you put the ground coffee into this brewer for the ratio is for one serving. So I do 25 grams of coffee. And this is what I was told by one of the top cafes in Vietnam. 25 grams of coffee goes into the Vietnamese brewer. And the grind, the, the grind size for this is pretty fine. I wouldn't say it's fine as espresso, but it's fine. Kind of like a cone filter. If you were to use it, if you were to compare it to something that we brew here in the United States, maybe a little bit finer. Than a cone filter. So you take this coffee, you put 25 grams in the brewer and you could kind of multiply this out depending on how big the brewer is. So 25 grams in. And then you take this top piece, which kind of just compresses, presses is. So if you look at it as like an espresso puck, for example, how we use a tamper, very similar concept in that you're not pressing down, you're not applying the force as you would in an espresso machine, because you're not using pressure with this, it's simply gravity fed. So you put this top little filter plate on. And what you start with is, you start with. So the entire drink is 70mls if you're weighing it out, ML, gram, whatever it is. So 70mls. But the brewing process starts with first pouring 20mls of hot water over the 25 grams of coffee. You do that, you wait for 30 seconds and then you add another 50mls of coffee. So what you're looking at there, so if 28.75 mls is a fluid ounce, you're looking at just under 3 ounces of finished product. That is your traditional Vietnamese coffee. So now that we know how to make Vietnamese coffee, let's look at those most popular drinks made in and prepared in Vietnam. So let's start with the egg coffee. The egg coffee can vary from depending which cafe you go to. It was fairly consistent. I went to one cafe where they were making the egg coffee. They added a little bit of the egg white into the coffee and as a result it was almost like this, what do they call meringue or like the, the egg mixture had like peaks, literally, he was like building. It looked like, it looked like a mountain on my cup. But the preparation for this, and there's different variations as well, I'll touch upon at the very end. But the basic preparation is, what you're doing is you're making a custard with the eggs. So you're only using the egg yolk. So you do two egg yolks. My recipe is two egg yolks into a cup and then I do one teaspoon of sugar into that cup. You take a blender. If you could fit the double blender in. Otherwise you take one leg out and with the hand blender you continue, you start to beat it and you keep going and blending, blending, blending until it becomes a custard consistency. Once you've got that custard consistency, you have your Vietnamese coffee in a cup. What I like to do with the Vietnamese coffee Is I'll do a one to one. So I'll put one ounce Vietnamese coffee or two ounces of Vietnamese coffee. Then I'll do two ounces of hot water, bring it to almost like an American cup of coffee. I've seen this done at a couple places in Vietnam. One being the most popular place in Vietnam for the egg coffee. And then you put the egg mixture on top, topping it with a little bit of cocoa powder and that is your egg coffee. Voila. Variations of the egg coffee. So I went to some cafes instead of using the sugar and they added condensed milk. And instead of doing two eggs, they added an extra yolk. So it's kind of like yin yang, tomato, tomato, whatever you want to do to make that coffee. My advice, test them all. They all have a very different taste. So see which one works for you. You might like it sweeter. You might like to use condensed milk, which gives it a very kind of mellowness. It cuts down. I feel like some of that egginss that's in the cream. I personally like the way that egg taste complements the coffee and it makes it almost taste like a tiramisu. So I prefer two eggs with the one sugar. But you do what you want, taste them all and decide that way. Second preparation, the coconut coffee. So in the coconut coffee they do your Vietnamese coffee how you started with. And they, they don't water that down. So that Vietnamese coffee is kept in its full strength form. So there's no watering that down. But with the coconut you have a couple options. I've seen it done differently. Basically it's just variations of how much coconut cream they use to condense milk. But those are the primary two ingredients. Condensed milk, coconut cream, not coconut milk, Coconut cream. So you have the coconut cream and you do. It's the. I found what I like is a 2 to 1 ratio. I've seen some ratios where they do like a 3 to 1 or a 4 to 1. Personally, I think when you do a 1 to 1 or 2 to 1, you get more of that coconutness. Because the coconut cream, it by itself is not very, it's not sweet at all. But when you add the coconut cream to the condensed milk, the condensed milk, that sweetness, the condensed milk brings out that coconut flavor. So I like a 2 to 1. And if you want even a little sweeter, do a one to one ratio. So with that what you do is you add the. And let me give you measurements for that ratio. So I would say you can do 40 grams of coconut. I'm sorry, 40 grams of condensed milk to 80 grams of coconut cream. So you put this mixture into a blender and some you might have to increase the ratio, like the serving size, so maybe twice the amount of what I just stated. Add that with ice to. Because you might need some quantity in the blender to actually make this slushy coconut mixture. When you're making the ice into that blender, you want to use crushed ice as opposed to the full cubes. Just because sometimes the cube doesn't fully crush or blend in and then it just doesn't taste right. You know, you'll get like a big hue when you're drinking it. It's not a good mouth feel. So you blend it in together and that'll make almost like a slushy consistency. Depending how much ice you use, you actually make it thicker. That goes into a cup. And then finally you add the Vietnamese coffee on top of that and voila, again you have your coconut coffee. You could also do a variation that if you wanted to with hot, you don't have to add any ice at all. You could literally just put the coconut coffee with the coconut cream with the condensed milk in a cup and do the hot coffee right over that. Again if you prefer, you can water down a little bit with hot water. Doing a one to one. So two ounces of the Vietnamese coffee, two ounces of hot water. Tomato, tomato, your choice. The last and the most easiest is the coffee with condensed milk. So you have the Vietnamese coffee just brewed. And with that serving of brewed Vietnamese coffee, you take 2 ounces of condensed milk and some people do more, some people be less. It's kind of up to you. But what you get is like this very caramel kind of concoction that they put over ice. Rarely does a place in Vietnam rarely do Vietnamese people drink their coffee hot. I mean, I didn't encounter anyone whenever I went to a cafe. They say we drink it cold, we always drink it cold. No one does it hot. I'm sure there are some outliers there, but for the most part they drink it cold. And all you do is you create this mixture and then you just pour it over ice. That is it. Easy, breezy. And the name for that is Cafe, Cafe Souda. If I'm not butchering the name, I have a very hard time pronouncing if it's not Italian, I have a hard time pronouncing other languages. But Cafe Souda, and that is just coffee with condensed milk. So there you have it. That is the Preparations of Vietnamese coffee in a nutshell for you. So if you're at home, if you have one of those brewers, awesome. I highly recommend trying these out. If you have an espresso machine, you could still do the egg coffee, you could still do the coconut cream, but you'll get a slightly different taste, but you'll kind of achieve the same result. There were places in Vietnam, rather than brewing the Vietnamese coffee, and these are more of like that third wave kind of the third wave vibe, which when I go to a place, I like to experience coffee the way they drink coffee. I don't like having espresso. If I wanted espresso, I'd go to Italy, or if I want to have American drip coffee, I'll stay in the States and I'll drink coffee there. So I like to have coffee in the methodology in that way that they are traditionally drinking it in that origin. But so, long story short, you can use espresso if you prefer. So that is it, guys. Thank you for tuning in. I hope you have tons of coffee in the upcoming year and I will talk to you soon. Cheers. Hey guys, it's Donnie. Just wanted to chime in. If you know coffee lovers who might have interest in hearing this, or they just like trying different ways of brewing coffee, I ask you, please share the love. Let them hear this episode. I loved all the coffee there and I think they will too. If you want to subscribe, you can subscribe to my podcast. Check me out on Facebook www.facebook.com Donny D O N N Y ROUSE R A U S Or you can tag me or look, find me on Instagram. D O N N Y R A U S Follow me. Connect with me. Tell me if you enjoyed the episode. If you try the episode or the coffees and maybe you have some questions, that is the place for you to ask them. Thank you so much, guys. Have an awesome new year and I look forward to connecting with you again soon.